Section 1

Mohammad Ali Jinnah began his political career firmly inside the tradition of moderate nationalist politics. A Muslim lawyer based in Bombay where the Indian National Congress had been founded in 1885, Jinnah was one of the foremost proponents of a share of power for Indians at the all-India centre. Anxious to forge a common nationalist front against the British, Jinnah joined the Congress and regularly attended its annual gatherings. Interestingly enough, Jinnah never showed much enthusiasm for the principle of separate electorates which were granted to Muslims by Morley and Minto in 1909. It was not until 1913, some seven years after its foundation, that Jinnah formally enrolled as a member of the A.I.M.L. In 1916 it was Jinnah who persuaded the League and the Congress to agree upon a common scheme of reforms. At the League's Lucknow session (over which he presided), Jinnah confessed that he had always been ‘a staunch Congressman’ and had ‘no love for sectarian cries’. He considered the ‘reproach of “separatism” sometimes levelled at Mussalmans’ as ‘singularly inept and wide of the mark’. In Jinnah's opinion, the League, ‘this great communal organisation [was] rapidly growing into a powerful factor for the birth of United India’.